If you’re like me, you look for every way you can to make your money go further during the holiday season. You look for every sale, every 2 for 1 special, anything you can to help you buy all of your holiday gifts.

Well let me ask you a question, isn’t this the same challenge your employees have? *Hint* the answer is yes, so my next question to you is - isn’t this the perfect time of year to remind them of your employee discount programme?

It’s great throughout the year, but invaluable during the holiday season!

One of the best ways to engage your employees with your discount programme is to make it real for them, doing this by giving them very specific helpful tips.

This will make it come to life, making them see what they can do and/or what they are missing out on by not using the discount programme.

Here are a few tips which I’ve used over the years as well as others that my lovely team at Reward Gateway have shared with me:

1. Double it up

I call these “Double Debs” (I promise this wasn’t my idea, someone at my last company called them this as my name is Debra).

They are when you get strategic in using discounts, using the employee discount in conjunction with a retail store’s discounts.

For example, if you get your discount voucher for 10% off, wait and use it when the store has a 20% off sale. This gives you a much bigger discount, and great savings.

I’ve found that employees get quite competitive on how many double or triple discounts they can craft together. . . . so make sure they know about them.

2. Let employees speak out

I’ve found that one of the best ways to market the employee discount programme is through other employees.

It’s not that my employees don’t believe me, but often they listen more to fellow colleagues.

So, ask your employees to share what they’ve done, creating a social media campaign of savings and holiday savings.

It can create excitement and interest just by using the momentum of social media.

3. Use your cashback

Remind them how they can use the money to pay for things within your employee discount programme, withdraw as cash, or some platforms even let you donate it to charity.

Even if they haven’t accumulated money in their cashback fund for this year, they may consider it for next year.

4. Use your shopping cards

Remind your employees that they can load shopping cards for themselves or to give as gifts, thus sharing the ‘love’ (discount).

Another suggestion made to me was to remember to load cards before the January sales, thus providing even more savings, fantastic!

5. Create wishlists

Another great suggestion I was given was regarding wishlists, let your employees know that some websites used through the discount programme may allow you to build a wishlist.

This means that you can put all the things you want to buy on the list, and they will let you know when there is a sale.

This is another form of a “Double Deb”, waiting for the perfect time to double up on your savings!

One final point I’d like to make is something that Lisa Turnbull, our Communications Manager at Reward Gateway, always reminds me, and that is to ‘create some magic’ in your communications.

Think of all of the holiday adverts, don’t they talk about the magical season?

Well add some magic to your communications and/or think of some special magic to get your employees to take notice. Think of your communications as the gift wrap around your present to your employee (which is your employee discount programme). Think of a way to get them to open it up and . . . . start making some holiday savings.

Debra is our Group Reward Director at Reward Gateway. She's our Rewards guru, having over 20 years experience as a rewards leader, speaker, teacher and an author of a book on employee communications. She's most recently known as the co-author of "The Rebel Playbook for Employee Engagement," which she's writing with Founder Glenn Elliott.